


checking out

by kbaycolt



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Canon-Typical The Spiral Content (The Magnus Archives), Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Spoilers for The Magnus Archives Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:53:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27561811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kbaycolt/pseuds/kbaycolt
Summary: Jon moves his attention back to the lost woman, who rubs at her green eyes and begs them for directions, long blonde hair falling out of its hasty tie. There is no such thing as directions here. Martin would want to help her. Is it better to give her false hope, rather than stand back and allow her to go easily into Helen's maw? The end result is the same."I don't know how long I've been here," she weeps, hunched in on herself."I'm so sorry," Jon tries again. It is feeble, useless, but it would be so much worse if he simply watched, and did nothing, like E- like Jonah. "I—""You've got to help me," she cries, and then she is staggering towards him with hands outstretched, her bloody fingers making contact with his jacket collar and Jon—Jon sees—
Relationships: Helen | The Distortion & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 10
Kudos: 141





	checking out

With a harsh fizzle of static, the statement ends as Helen's victim rounds the corner, coming face-to-face with him.

She's a wreck. Blue eyes big and watery, rimmed with red, her hands wringing together with a sort of anxious stress that Jon recognizes well. Her pale face, perhaps once pretty and collected, is haggard and worn. She rakes her fingers through her short brown hair, worsening its disarray.

Jon shakes his head, disoriented from the shift in perspective as he was dropped unceremoniously back into his own body. The woman, her name forgotten however many doors ago, focuses on him, eyes brightening with hope.

He shrinks back, away from it.

"Oh, oh, thank God!" the woman cries, stumbling forward. "Please, do you know where room 288 is? I… My son, he's, I don't know how long he's been in there on his own, and I need to find him—"

Jon takes another step back as she tries to get closer to him. Guilt, deep and cold, clenches in his chest. Yet another poor soul he cannot help. _Get in line,_ some bitter part of him wants to hiss. Isn't he shouldering enough? Hasn't he seen enough, known enough?

But he knows this is part of Helen's game. Force him to confront her monstrosities up close, gauge his reaction. Always shifting angles to assess the situation from all sides. Sometimes, he wonders if she was better suited for Beholding than Spiral. He already knew what he was going to see here. He has come for a different sort of confirmation.

"Look, I'm so sorry," Jon begins, holding his hands up placatingly. "But... there is no room 288."

The woman shudders and vigorously shakes her head. "But my son!"

A noise, reminiscent of knives on records, heralds Helen's arrival. She _unfolds_ from the black carpet, or was it yellow? Helen doesn't make sense, here, moreso than usual. Her hands, large and thin and sharp, tuck themselves neatly into one another, the pockets of her pantsuit impossibly expanding to encompass them. Her smile is white, white, white. She leers over her victim's shoulder, and though she stoops to fit within the thin corridor, her head does not even reach the top of the doorframe. Jon blinks, and Helen is now in front of the woman, meeting her gaze.

"—Is around here somewhere," Helen coos, soothing. "Come on, let's have a look together."

The woman's deep brown eyes spill over with relieved tears. She accepts when Helen takes her hands, seemingly not noticing the gaping wounds that start to bleed upon doing so. "Oh, brilliant, oh thank you, thank you so much!"

"Now, where did you see him last?"

"Uh, okay. It was... it was in room..." The woman frowns, face twisting up in confusion. "Wait, wait hang on."

Jon grits his teeth. "She's lying to you. She isn't your friend."

The woman looks up at Helen, drawing her hands back, horrified bewilderment sending her a couple steps backward. Her hands are smeared with blood that she absently presses to her grey sweater, staining the cotton. "I... wait. I-I know you. You're that woman from reception."

Helen doesn't move, but her eyes, black as a chalkboard, find Jon regardless. "Jon, this isn't your business." He glares at her. The woman continues to whimper and shake as Helen rounds on him, irritated. "Listen, I don't come up and tell you how to pull horror from people's brains, do I?"

"You _do,_ a bit, actually, yes."

"Well, okay, that's... that's fair."

Jon moves his attention back to the lost woman, who rubs at her green eyes and begs them for directions, long blonde hair falling out of its hasty tie. Helen will not give them. And even if she would, there is no such thing as directions here. Such is the nature of a place like this. He shifts on his feet, torn. Martin would want to help her. Is it better to give her false hope, rather than stand back and allow her to go easily into Helen's maw? The end result is the same. It always is and always will be.

"I don't know how long I've been here," she weeps, hunched in on herself.

"I'm so sorry," Jon tries again. He knows it is feeble and useless, but he also knows it would be so much worse if he simply watched, and did nothing, like E- like _Jonah_. "I—"

"You've got to help me," she cries, and then she is staggering towards him with hands outstretched, her bloody fingers making contact with his jacket collar and Jon—

Jon sees—

— _cold blue eyes, a snarl, a hand gripping his shoulder tight, too tight, pinning his trembling body to the tree as a blunt knife slides across his throat—_

_—hard plastic tapping over his blindfolded eyes, an inhuman laugh that pitches up and down and rings painfully in his ears—_

_—a growl, "That’s how you want it? Fine. You brought a knife. So we go through the voicebox—"_

_—searing, scorching hot wax, skin bubbling and burning, white blinding agony—_

_—thick meaty fingers buried in his chest, probing, parting pulsing flesh and slick ribs, snapping bone from bone and taking taking taking, "Hardly worth a rib—"_

Jon's hands fly up and grasp her wrists, shoving her back as hard as he can and shouting hoarsely, " _Don't touch me!"_ He backs up, almost falling in his haste to put distance between him and her desperate, invasive touch.

The woman trips and hits the ground hard with a shriek, bursting into heaving sobs and cowering away from him. Her voice cracks, weak and terrified. "I'm sorry... it's just my _son_..."

But Jon can barely hear her over his own panicked gasps, his heart pounding wildly at a jackrabbit pace than cannot be healthy. The corridor is dizzyingly wide, all of a sudden, and he has to lean down into a crouch and press his hands to the blue and pink carpet just to feel something stable. His scars twinge. He isn't sure how much of that is real and how much of that is in his head. What's the difference anymore? In this brave new world, everything is whatever he wants it to be!

He forces down the hysterical laugh that threatens to bubble up and out of him. The absolute worst place to break down in this entire hellscape is undoubtedly inside the fucking _Distortion,_ so he clenches his jaw and gets to his feet, ignoring how he feels like he's going to shake apart into little pieces.

Helen has her head tilted like a curious feline, wide-eyed and faux sympathetic as he pulls himself together. The woman on the ground is still crying.

"Oopsie," Helen says. "Not so easy, is it? Keeping up your humanity?"

The guilt inside Jon is an icy pit. He sucks in a deep breath and forces his hands still, pressing them against each other. Helen's victim stares at him from where she's sprawled, eyes darting like a frightened prey animal, breathing labored and upset. Jon doesn't offer to help her up.

And Jon hates himself for it, for when Helen ushers her away, closing the door in her wake—relief washes over him like a cool breeze.

"Sending her away?" Jon says, and finds his voice does not shake. Good. "I must have hit a nerve."

Helen's mouth, too big for her face, is curled into a tense smile. "Got _on_ my nerves. Not the same thing."

* * *

He kills Helen.

He hesitates to call it that. Of the criteria for a living organism, Helen only fit two of seven, but nor was she quite a dead thing either. She was an archway, a hall, a door. A lie.

Which he knows. Has known for a while.

Helen's domain collapses and crumples in on itself as she shudders and breaks under the weight of his god. To know the unknowable. Even she, in the end, couldn't twist her way out of this one.

Reality wraps around him and suddenly he is no longer there, but kneeling on a grassy expanse of damp earth at the border of Martin's domain. The sky looks down at him, blinking steadily. Jon feels the tension leave him as he turns and sees an indistinct form stepping out of the fog, slowly coming into focus as Martin comes into full view.

"Martin!" he cries, struggling to his feet. He almost trips, but manages to keep his balance, tamping down on how jittery and unsteady he feels. Martin hurries over to meet him halfway.

"Christ, Jon," Martin says, reaching out to touch him. "What happened?"

When Martin's warm hands connect with Jon's forearms, his heart jumps into his throat and he flinches back. He draws his hands back to himself, horrible shame tightening in his stomach as Martin freezes.

"Jon?" Martin says quietly. "Are you okay?"

Jon swallows hard. "I, ah. I'm sorry. Th-There was a woman, in Helen's domain, and she tried to—to—" He makes a vague grabbing motion. The woman's hands, covered in thin bloody slits, flashes through his mind. His jacket collar has blood on it. "It brought back some things. That's all. I just—I thought I was alright, but I just need a minute."

"Okay."

That's all. Martin doesn't get angry, or frustrated with him for flinching. He doesn't get offended at Jon's knee-jerk reaction. Instead, he deliberately takes a step back, giving Jon space. Jon is so grateful it hurts.

After a few moments of slowly getting his heart rate under control, he manages to still his trembling hands. Almost everyone who has ever hurt him is gone now, he firmly reminds himself. They are gone because of him. He made sure they would never hurt him again. Michael, Jude, Nikola, Jared. Daisy. Helen.

He exhales. Closes his eyes for one more second, then opens them and gives Martin a reassuring look. "I'm alright now. You can, uh, you can come here."

"Are you sure?" Martin asks. Checking, as always. Jon nods.

Martin crosses the distance between them. Instead of reaching for him this time, Martin holds out one hand, giving Jon the choice to accept or not. He smiles, tired but fond, and slips his hand into Martin's loose grasp.

"Thank you," Jon says softly. "So, how... how was your domain?"

Martin looks at him incredulously. "Really? You're going to change the subject to _me?_ Jon, you—"

"No, no, I-I know, you're right. Sorry. Bad habit."

With a hum, Martin tilts his head, meeting Jon's eyes. "It's alright. I'm just worried about you. You look like a wreck."

"I know. I, er, killed Helen."

"Oh." Martin turns their clasped hands over, gently squeezing Jon's palm. "I'm sure you had good reason."

"I—Yes. I finally saw her for what she truly was."

"And?"

"A lie. Specifically, though, the lie of friendship. Of horror that masquerades as kindness." Jon thinks about the way Helen had manifested, right before he completely destroyed her. The way she spat and snarled like an animal forced into a corner. The way she lunged for his face, clawing and bursting from a shattered door to grab him, get in one last injury before he erased her existence.

She didn't reach him. She didn't touch him, in the end. But it was close.

It was so damn close.

Jon takes in another breath. Martin rubs gentle circles over his scarred skin. "Did you know that Helen was scared of you more than me?"

" _No._ Really?"

"Really."

Martin snorts. "Wow."

He isn't prying. He isn't pushing. Jon shouldn't be surprised, after knowing Martin for this long. He should've trusted Martin would be good about this. About him and all his myriad of issues.

Jon leans forward and rests his head on Martin's shoulder, allowing his boyfriend to lightly thread his fingers in Jon's hair, tender as only Martin could ever be.

"Any more shocking revelations you'd like to tell me?" Martin asks.

Jon glances to the left, where a vast, dark city rises up out of the wasteland. And towering above it all, a nightmarish amalgamation of the institute and panopticon, warped and twisted up into one dizzyingly tall spire. The eye of the storm.

"Do you see that?" he says.

Martin follows his gaze. He goes still, turning back to Jon with dread in his pale blue eyes. "That's...?"

Jon doesn't need to say it aloud. He does so anyway. "Yes. We're almost to London."

**Author's Note:**

> this isn't that good lmao
> 
> anyways. whatever. i loved this episode so much and had to write something


End file.
